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Short Stories

'Why don’t you paint me?’ she asked. ‘I don’t paint anyone,’ I replied. ‘Actually, I don’t paint at all.’ ‘But you could,’ she remarked. ‘In theory, I suppose. But I’m not any good.’ ‘Do you have to be good?’ she asked. ‘In order to paint someone.’ â€

From the table I had chosen in the coffee shop I could see the entrance of the train station. Already I had seen three trains arrive and the crowds emerge and disperse. Absolutely everyone that walked out of the station looked like they could have been the lead in a charming romantic comedy. I had b

A woman drives through woods in winter. On either side of the car, tall trees stand and sulk, resisting winter’s demise at the year’s turn. The woman is scared. She is the fifth carer for the old man, and no one has told her why. But she’s heard the stories and she is afraid. It’s New Yea

Getting my son to school, the comedy of errors begins. Because the locking mechanism on my Subaru has frozen, the rear door won’t open unless I do it from the outside. I pull the parking brake, step out and find myself spread eagled on a sheath of black ice. Whenever I turn off the radio, the door

It was my mother’s last Christmas, though we didn’t know it then. She was slower, I recall; less stately, less loquacious, less of her all round. The fierce pince-nez on the end of her nose, yet still, her summer rose blush dusted on sharp cheekbones, a black dress, that diamond brooch of twin f

The snow began as I was driving home from Sunday dinner with Maria and her family. Really Christmas, I thought, and felt comforted. Maria’s family had welcomed me as an honoured guest. Probably, I’d thought, the first foreigner ever to enter their home. Certainly the first welcome foreigner.

Oh blimey, Frank. Give me strength. It sweeps the ceiling, stretches to the walls. Their flat smells dark green, of pine-forest. Their rag-rug that they’d made together, over long dark evenings in the hiss of gaslight smelling of fish-glue, is already piled thick with needles. Oh Frank, be careful

We had walked down to see the frozen canal. It was the day after Bonfire Night and the sky was bright blue. Not a cloud about. Cold though. Coldest it had been all year. We sat on a bench and ate slices of Alison’s homemade lemon drizzle. Drank tea from a flask. There was a scattering of icing-sug